Commentary on the readings: 9 OT A

Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, A

Deut 11: 18, 26-28, 32

Ps 31

Rom 3: 31-23, 28

Mt 7: 21-27



The readings center upon the need to make choices. The First Reading acts as a summary of Moses’ teaching to the Chosen People: “Take these words of mine in your heart and soul—bind them at your wrist as a sign, and let them be a pendant on your forehead.” (It is from this verse that the Orthodox Jewish practice of wearing tefillin --in Greek, phylacteries—is derived.) Moses then goes on to say, “I set before you here a blessing and a curse.” The Responsorial Psalm is the song of the people who wish to choose the blessing, and not the curse: “Lord, be my rock of refuge, a stronghold to give me safety.” In the Gospel, Jesus ends the Sermon on the Mount by instructing His hearers that lip-service alone will not provide entrance into the Kingdom of heaven; even the performance of miracles will not be evidence for admission. Rather, the ones who “do the will of the Father in heaven” will enter there (living in the ways outlined in the Sermon heard on the five preceding Sundays). Those who hear the word and keep it will be like the one who built his house on rock—and unlike the one who built his on sand. The “blessing” and the “curse” have their concrete illustrations in this parable. Abba Philoxenos of Mabbug said of this passage, “This saying of our Master obliges us to be diligent not only in hearing God’s word, but also in obeying it. We do well to listen to the law…but to be careful in reading, listening, and meditating on the law of God, without doing what it says, is a wickedness that the Spirit of God has already condemned.” (Homily 1)



We begin a sixteen-week in-course reading of the Epistle to the Romans today. The Second Reading begins with a word that most lectors will gloss over—the small but vital word, NOW. With this word, Paul indicates that God has taken direct action in history by coming to us in Christ. Having done so, God has shown us his saving work on our behalf, which Paul calls “righteousness” (using this word in a completely different fashion than either the Gospel according to Matthew or the Letter of James does). We have been put right with God (the term Paul uses is “justified”) through the death and resurrection of Jesus.



You can hear a motet based on the Gospel Reading---"Similabo Eum---on the compact disc "Music for the Year of Matthew," sung by the Schola Cantorum of St. Peter's in the Loop, available from The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, MN (www.litpress.org).